| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| cab |
Top Wild Food that you don't really like...Okay... I'm going to say it... Heresy time...Chanterelles. I mean, yeah, they're okay, but they're not THAT special. I mean, I like them, but I can pick two dozen or more species of mushroom that I like a LOT more than chanterelles. Really, whats the big deal? Oh, and I can take or leave morels too. Tasty, for sure, but my favourite Spring mushroom by MILES is the St. Georges mushroom. Anyone else? Favoured wild foods that you just don't get? |
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| thos |
Elderberries. | ||||||
| jema |
Only the Welsh could possibly like Laverbread 
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| jamanda |
And the Devonian, though here it's just called laver. But all the butchers sell it, so someone must like it. |
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| mochyn |
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| cab |
Only the Welsh could ruin laverbread like that  I've taken to chewing it raw and fresh from the sea, its rather pleasant like that.
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| jema |
fairy nuff, only tried it in massacred form. |
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| cab |
Its as near as dammit the same thing as the stuff thats dried out and rolled around sushi; I think that the Japanese approach is ever so much more elegant. |
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| mochyn |
Actually I'm with Cab on chanterelles. OK in with other shrooms but distinctly lacking in excitement on their own. | ||||||
| gil |
Anything involving hawthorn (leaves, flowers, or berries) | ||||||
| cab |
Even the titchy little green buds in Spring? |
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| gil |
Fraid so. I just don't find them that pleasant.
Same goes for young beech leaves. And the oakleaf wine I made was not (IMO) worth repeating. |
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| kyoto |
Truffles! Never picked any but tasted some in a restaurant. Can't see what the fuss is about. | ||||||
| Nicky cigreen |
Jack-by the hedge. smells wondeful, tastes bitter | ||||||
| cab |
Oooh... You have you get it REALLY young. Like, the new autumn growth before winter, and even then its a tiny bit bitter. |
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| Jonnyboy |
Or Dulse for the Northern Irish, appalling stuff. |
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| mihto |
I have a food inconsitency to chantarelles. They make me horribly sick, and even if I do like them I cannot eat even one. My haul is all dried/frozen and duely delivered to my sons.
We have less - or different - foraging stuff then you people. Never met anything I didn't like, but have probably not been brave enough? |
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| AnnaD |
Puffballs aren't as nice as I hoped, but I think that's because of the slimy texture when I fry them. It's annoying because it seems to be the most pleantiful wild mushroom around here. | ||||||
| bubble |
my top ten ,morels ,truffles ,ceps ,horns,chanties[must use potato cubes garlic olive oil and eggs on toast fresh parmesan and lemon]aga. silvaticus, saffrons, charcoal burners,hedgehogs and clitocybe geotropa. 
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| Went |
Shaggy Ink Caps .......yuk
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| nettie |
Tawny grisettes. They can be really bitter sometimes. | ||||||
| lottie |
I like shaggy inkcaps----probably because they are one of the mushrooms I feel safe picking---not desperately keen on young ground elder, but I will use it. |
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| Went |
Perhaps it is the way I cook them but never acquired the taste for them...... |
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| cab |
The giant puffball? Its rather variable in flavour, sometimes really intense, sometimes not. I've had specimens that were almost too strongly flavoured to eat, others that tasted of little. Odd critters, puffballs. |
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| cab |
I'm getting a bit of a mushroom trend here 
Good call with C. geotropa. Haven't had any for about two years, haven't found 'em. But an underrated shroom. Same for A. silvaticus... You prefer that to A. augustus? |
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| cab |
If you can get enough, they make delightful soup. |
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| AnnaD |
Just the small ones. I've yet to find a giant puffball sadly. |
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| 2steps |
Anything green and leafy but I have never tasted any leafy veg I did like. I don't like shop bought mushrooms but wouldn't rule out trying others | ||||||
| Treacodactyl |
Snails - I'm yet to find a method of making them edible. I don't think I'm too fussy and eat things like winkles and limpets, which I found quite tasty raw, but not snails.
I actually think chanterelles are some of the tastiest shrooms I've tried. As for wild greens, the phrase "tastes like spinach" always seems to crop up, which is fine if you like spinach and don't have anything green in the veg patch... |
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| happytechie |
snails need garlic and butter, lots of it, and then some more garlic and butter serve with garlic butter and crusty bread, Yummy |
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| LynneA |
raw oysters 
Does that count? I love Laverbread, fried in bacon fat and doused in vinegar. The last time I went to Glasto, there was a Welsh burger van where I went for my "off menu" brekkie of laver and bacon roll. I was the only person who'd touched the laver the whole festival, so on the Sunday they gave me a tub of what they had left over to take home. Bliss. |
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| sally_in_wales |
I love laverbread and I'm only Welsh by wossname. Still it does need doing just right, I've been served some awful stuff in my time.The way Gareth cooks it is lovely though, peppery, lemony and with lots of texture |
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| Gervase |
I was put off when we stayed in a B&B while house-hunting and I foolishly opted for the "full Welsh" breakfast. It came with the usual stuff - plastic sausages, burned bacon and tinned tomatoes like odd testicles - but also a spoonful of cockles from a jar and what looked like a pile of fishy snot or the expectoration of a dying dolphin. This, it turned out, was a delicacy called laverbread.
Never again! |
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| sally_in_wales |
I can see why that would put you off, its very like the classic black pudding saga, or brawn, a good example is a delight, the nasty plastic regurgitated supermarket version is unspeakable.
Tell you what, I'll get Gareth to do a small batch of laverbread his way for the food weekend, then anyone wanting to see if it was just that they were served a horrid version can have a little taste and see if it was just a one off bad experience or whether they really don't care for it 
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| lettucewoman |
when is the food weekend??? Have I missed something???? 
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| jamanda |
The weekend after Easter next year. I'll find the thread. it possibly went up while you were on holiday. Here it is. http://forum.downsizer.net/viewtopic.php?t=34715&highlight=devon+weekend |
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| AnnaD |
It'd actually really like to try laverbread. So when I eventually visit Wales I'll give it a try. | ||||||
| sally_in_wales |
a tip then, refuse to eat the tinned stuff, make sure its seasoned with lemon juice and a bit of pepper and rolled in oats before being fried- and you stand a good chance of enjoying it. My belief is that most people who hated it were served cold slimy tinned mush, not nicely prepared and presented fresh stuff
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| Nicky cigreen |
i like laverbread... only had it once though.. did I get lucky, or do i like the rubbish stuff... going to have to have lots more to find out now.. | ||||||
| marigold |
Winkles. But it's "REALLYREALLY don't like" rather than "don't really like" . Horrible things. Like chewing bits of car tyre. Even the business of pulling them from their shells is repellent.
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| Treacodactyl |
I quite like winkles, just waiting for them to be in season and we'll forage for some more on the Sussex coast. If you don't like winkles have you tried raw limpets? |
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| AnnaD |
Oooh, that sounds really nice! I like seaweed anyway, so I would probably like that if prepared properly. |
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| marigold |
No. TBH all shellfish has the "eeuuuwww factor" for me  . I can just about stomach a mussel or two to be polite, but I'm pathetically conservative about seafood generally... I used to like crab and prawns and stuff like that, but prawns give me migraine nowadays and I suspect crab might have the same effect, so sadly I avoid all such things now.
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| Motyka |
Fungus-wise, I find the flavour of St George's mushrooms too sickly and musty, which is a pity as their firm texture is otherwise wonderful - but no matter how I've tried to cook them (both buttons and open capped) : as soup, in curries, their flavour simply overpowers everything else!! So disappointing! Perhaps someone can give me some pointers on the best way to cook them? | ||||||
| jamanda |
Welcome to the forum Motyka. Can't help with the mushrooms though. | ||||||
| dpack |
nettles
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| jamanda |
Just drinking nettle wine. V nice. | ||||||
| dpack |
on yer go | ||||||
| PeteS |
I am not that keen on Chicken of the Woods or Blackberries. Of course I do eat these, but for me I find them overrated.
As for Chanterelles I love them! One of my top mushrooms. |